Woman tells court of being unable to stop father raping her sister

A County Westmeath woman has told a Central Criminal Court jury that she watched her three-year-old sister being raped by her father as there was nothing she could do to stop it because she was afraid of him.

The woman, who alleges that her father also raped and sexually abused her from the time she was five years old, said that when she saw her father coming in drunk and undoing his belt that day, she picked up her little sister and put her arms around her to protect her.

Her father pulled her sister from her, laid two cushions on the floor and raped the three-year-old.

The woman, who was five years old at the time, said she remembered her sister crying and looking back up at her but there was nothing she could do because she was scared.

The now 22-year-old woman said her father then called her over, took down her shorts and underwear and raped her.

The 44-year-old accused has pleaded not guilty to a total of 35 charges of sexual assault, oral rape, anal rape and rape relating to his two daughters and younger brother-in-law on dates between December 1, 1991 and June 1999. The children were aged between three and 15 years old at the time.

The complainant told Mr Alexander Owens SC (with Mr Garnet Orange BL), prosecuting, that the first time her father raped her she had walked into the sitting room in their home to discover him anally raping her 15-year-old uncle.

She wanted to leave but her father made her stay and while the teenager was crying in the corner her father put her lying on the ground, pulled up her school skirt, took down her underwear and raped her.

The complainant told the jury that she was sore and crying but when she told her father he was hurting her, he said he would be finished in a few minutes.

He then brought both her and her uncle into the bathroom, put them in the bath and told them that if they told anybody about what had just happened he would murder them.

The woman told the jury that her father anally raped her three times, once in a field that he claimed was a shortcut to her grandmother's home and another time when they went for a Sunday-afternoon walk.

She denied a suggestion by Mr Conor Devally SC (with Mr Ronan Munro BL), defending, that incidents she described to the jury did not happen although she may have experienced violence and neglect.

She also rejected a suggestion that she had told another girl that her mother's partner had got her pregnant as a teenager and her mother had beaten her and she had a miscarriage.

She further denied that she had encouraged her sister and uncle to come forward and didn't accept that she had discussed the abuse with them.

She didn't accept a suggestion that she enlisted her sister's and uncle's assistance and she looked to them for help.

The accused's younger daughter told the jury that her father would do things to both her and her sister "that a father should never do to his children".

She said that one day her father took off her clothes, started touching her and then had sex with her on the sitting-room floor.

She said the abuse started "some time" after she started to live with her father when she was three years old and stopped when she was six and went to stay with relatives.

"He did it lots of times, sometimes he would just touch me and get me to touch him. I was sore and scared and I didn't know what was happening. I was scared that it was going to happen again," the complainant told Mr Owens.

She agreed with Mr Devally that she told gardaí that nobody but her father sexually abused her at any time but denied that she had told an aunt of hers, or led her to believe, that she had been interfered with by an uncle.

The accused's brother-in-law told Mr Owens that he found living with the accused "very depressing and stressful" and was terrified of him.

He said that he was anally raped by the man one night after he made him watch a sex tape. He couldn't recall any other "sex incident" with his brother-in-law.

The complainant agreed with Mr Devally that he made his first statement to gardaí about eight years after the alleged incident and although he detailed how the accused used to be violent towards him he never mentioned being sexually abused by him.

He told the jury that it "was only out of embarrassment" that he never mentioned how the accused had raped him. He said he didn't know when he got over this but said he had been drinking a lot at that time and was very upset.

The hearing continues before Mr Justice Daniel Herbert and a jury of seven men and five women.